It is now forty-five years since the last act of the rebellion was consummated, by the defeat of Duncombe's party in the London district, the punishment of Sutherland's brigands at Windsor, and the destruction of the steamer _Caroline_ and dispersal of the discreditable ruffians, of whom their "president," Mackenzie, was heartily sick, at Navy Island. None of these events came within my own observation, and I pass them by without special remark.
But respecting Sir Francis Bond Head and his antagonist, I feel that more should be said, in justice to both. It is eminently unfair to censure Sir Francis for not doing that which he was not commissioned to do. Even so thorough a Reformer and so just a man as Earl Russell, had failed to see the advisability of extending "responsible government" to any of Her Majesty's Colonies. Up to the time of Lord Durham's report in 1839, no such proposal had been even mooted; and it appears to have been the general opinion of British statesmen, at the date of Sir Francis Head's appointment, that to give a responsible ministry to Canada was equivalent to offering her independence. In taking it for granted that Canadians as a whole were unfit to have conferred on them the same rights of self-government as were possessed by Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotchmen in the old country, consisted the original error. This error, however, Sir Francis shared with the Colonial Office and both Houses of the Imperial Parliament. Since those days the mistake has been admitted, and not Canada alone, but the Australian colonies and South Africa have profited by our advancement in self-government.
As for Sir Francis's personal character, even Mackenzie's biographer allows that he was frank, kindly and generous in an unusual degree. That he won the entire esteem of so many men of whom all Canadians of whatever party are proud--such men as Chief Justice Robinson, Bishop Strachan, Chief Justices Macaulay, Draper and McLean, Sir Allan N. McNab, Messrs. Henry Ruttan, Mahlon Burwell, Jno. W. Gamble and many others, I hold to be indubitable proof of his high qualities and honest intentions. Nobody can doubt that had he been sent here to carry out responsible government, he would have done it zealously and honourably. But he was sent to oppose it, and, in opposing it, he simply did his duty.